Participation expenses ratio question...

Humor me on this one. 

I'm curious for responses from The Hive on how much they spent on their actual trackday/competition vehicle (cost of the car/motorcycle/kart + parts) as compared to the amount of money they spend on the peripheral costs (e.g. entry fees, consumables, transportation gas, etc.).  For the purposes of my question, things like tires/brakes worn out in competition would count as "consumables".  Safety equipment (driving suits, helmets, gloves, shoes, leathers, boots) would also count as "peripheral" and not the actual cost of the vehicle.   I know this is going to vary wildly and I'm looking for a very general indication here, not a firm documentation.  

Crude Example:

Motorcycle: $1000

Safety gear (leathers/helmet/etc.)  $2000

Fuel to get to race weekends:    $250

Food/Lodging:                               $500

Entry Fees:                                       $250

Peripherals = $3K as compared to vehicle cost $1K

The reason I'm asking is that I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that while I might be able to build the car/motorcycle projects in which I'm interested, unless I win the lottery I'll probably not be able to afford the costs of actually participating in any events.  I'm guessing that even if the actual vehicle was free, I probably couldn't afford the participation costs.  If that's the case, then I might as well just sell all the crap I've spent 40 years accumulating and save it for an inheritance for my kids.  That strikes me in a small way like giving up on life, but to not do that is wasted energy and time.  

Thoughts?

the ratio heavily favors autocross

Unless you have a nice newer car the participation costs will quickly catch up. I think I could run for about 2-2.5 years on what i have into my track car. It runs like $425ish an hour of track time. Its why so many people stick to autocross. I could run a season for the cost of just a couple track days. If you rebuild a junk yard car it gets even worse. 

That's a really weird way to break down the costs, mixing short and long term consumables. If you're going that simplistic it makes more sense to consider things like safety gear as part of the vehicle cost. But realistically it's a third category that would get amortized over their expected life cycle (unless you're planning to buy a whole set of safety gear for every event you do, or only ever do one event).

Relevant to that particular example, motorcycle stuff is going to be a bit more expensive because the gear is application specific and wears at a faster rate and it's more important to have good quality stuff. On the car side, get yourself a basic helmet and you can do autocross, most hpde events, and maybe even some TT (plus other things like rental karts, etc) And that helmet will be good for basically as long as you can manage to tolerate. Add in a suit and some form of neck restraint and you can do basically anything you want and again the stuff is good for basically as long as you're willing to tolerate.

Also...these activities are much more enjoyable if you remain blissfully unaware of the hidden costs.

For the moment I will give you the short answer.

An out of town vintage race weekend now costs me $1455. That is amortized cost everything including the cost of safety gear.

A single day local track day cost me $575.

I am doing this with a $9000 car, a $700 trailer towed by a $9200 van.

I race a slow but mid pack finishing Lemons car. All my costs combined come out to around $5 per minute of track time. If everything goes right that's for ~2.5 hours of seat time.

It's tough because a lot of costs are one time while some are recurring and some are unexpected. My $5 includes consumables, repairs, entry fees, safety gear, etc. I don't count my gas because it's varied between me driving to a race vs riding with one of the other guys etc. For our first race the ratio was probably about 50/50.

I drag race. 30k ish into the car. 15k into the tow rig and trailer. Maybe 5k in spares. 500-1k per weekend. Seat time is measured in single digit minutes/season. By definition the better you are at this your $/seat time is increased. Figure a top fuel effort is 10s of millions per maybe a minute of wot per season. 

I will add that if I ran my Mustang (track day only car) I could probably do single tracks days for about $400 per day.

My schedule typically includes 2 vintage races, 4-6 track days (single days) and 2-4 autocrosses. So my max annual participation is about $7000 in any given year.

Note I typically drive a 5-14 year old car as a daily.

If you want to actually analyze the costs of running a car on a race track the way to do it is treat every component in the car as a consumable, assign it a lifetime before it needs to be replaced, and then divide the replacement cost by that lifetime.  Add all those values up and it gives you an hourly cost to run the car.  Multiply that by the hours of an event and add event logistics (hotel, food, entry fee, tow fuel, tow maintenance, trailer maintenance -- you can do those by mile) and you've got the long-term cost of each event you run.  You may not be paying all of those costs up front, but if you keep doing it you'll be paying them eventually.

It's hard to rationally defend this hobby once you've done the math, so a lot of people prefer the approach of "stick your head in the sand and pay for it out of a slush fund".  :)

I figure racing my E46 M3 with NASA is about $600/hour in consumables/maintenance costs.

In principle autocross is the same, but since most people are running a daily driver rather than a dedicated car it gets murkier.  The actual running time is so low, though, that the number is heavily dominated by tire costs.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

If you want to actually analyze the costs of running a car on a race track the way to do it is treat every component in the car as a consumable, assign it a lifetime before it needs to be replaced, and then divide the replacement cost by that lifetime.  Add all those values up and it gives you an hourly cost to run the car.  Multiply that by the hours of an event and add event logistics (hotel, food, entry fee, tow fuel, tow maintenance, trailer maintenance -- you can do those by mile) and you've got the long-term cost of each event you run.  You may not be paying all of those costs up front, but if you keep doing it you'll be paying them eventually.

It's hard to rationally defend this hobby once you've done the math, so a lot of people prefer the approach of "stick your head in the sand and pay for it out of a slush fund".  :)

 

Agreed.

Also consider the extended/indirect(?) costs.

If you weren't racing, would you need a garage?  What about a trailer?  A truck?  Etc.  Those costs are huge.

Lets see how mine shakes out for my upcoming track trials

• Car+trailer+HANS+spares $8k

Safety (ammortized)

• Helmet $270 (good till 2030)
• Belts/arm restraints $300 ($235 again in 2028)
• Suit $365 (good for ~10 years?)  (https://www.raceimage.com/ Good used suits to save money)
• Headsock / Gloves $90
• Shoes $60

• Tires $1200 / set  (every other year currently )
• Towing Fuel - $50 (230 miles to track, figure 16mpg (havent recorded)
• Racing Fuel - $100 (race gas to not kill fuel cell)
• Lodging - Trailer converted to camp at track. Call it $50 to pay for power this weekend?
• entry $325 (early bird)

There's more expenses to add up, but most of that was spread over the last 5 years...  

I'm not counting my truck because I would still need it without the racecar. 

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

In principle autocross is the same, but since most people are running a daily driver rather than a dedicated car it gets murkier.  The actual running time is so low, though, that the number is heavily dominated by tire costs.

We estimate our per run cost at $20; at least half of that is tires.

I don't do enough track days to have a good idea of how long consumables last....so I can just kind of pretend those costs don't exist. 

Way back in 1988 I sold all my RC car stuff because it would be cheaper to road race a motorcycle!

Now my 68 Mustang is good enough to autocross and nice enough to win car shows as well as drive  pretty much any where without snow on the road so in a way it gets cheaper to use the more I use it.lol I know.

Now my 64 Comet build remains to be seen,I'm near $10k in parts and it's still 6ft in the air above said Mustang.

When I autocrossed the Mustang for points I once's worked out that each day,4-6runs, cost about $150,figuring in entry,fuel for the car,snacks and food and 1.5 sets of tires a year. I drove the car to events and had no over night expenses. Good guys events,2 a year , upped it to about 250 a weekend ,12+ runs.

That math looks terrible because it's bad math. Directly combining non-recurring costs (NRC) with a single occurrence of recurring costs (RC), as if you're either only running one event ever or that you're getting all new safety gear every event, is going to give a wildly misleading result. Garbage in equals garbage out.

The other big problem is that even if safety gets moves up to NRC where it belongs, the ratio of NRC vs RC itself is entirely meaningless. All models are wrong, but some are useful. This one is not. The RC may have some correlation to NRC, but it's FAR from 1:1. If you go buy a $15k bike, the gear and event fees don't also go up anywhere near 15x. So basically if you believe that getting to a certain ratio will make it more viable, then you only need to buy an expensive enough vehicle to get the ratio where you want it.

The mental hurdle you actually seem to be trying to overcome is the flip side of that. No matter how low you get your vehicle NRC, your safety NRC and RC both don't to go down at all equivalently and are both largely outside of your control for any given type of event.

If $1k RC is more than you are willing and able to afford for each event of the type you want to participate in, in the quantity you want to participate in it, finding another type and/or quantity of event(s) you would still want to participate in at a more palatable RC may be better than throwing in the towel on something you otherwise enjoy.

prodarwin said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

If you want to actually analyze the costs of running a car on a race track the way to do it is treat every component in the car as a consumable, assign it a lifetime before it needs to be replaced, and then divide the replacement cost by that lifetime.  Add all those values up and it gives you an hourly cost to run the car.  Multiply that by the hours of an event and add event logistics (hotel, food, entry fee, tow fuel, tow maintenance, trailer maintenance -- you can do those by mile) and you've got the long-term cost of each event you run.  You may not be paying all of those costs up front, but if you keep doing it you'll be paying them eventually.

It's hard to rationally defend this hobby once you've done the math, so a lot of people prefer the approach of "stick your head in the sand and pay for it out of a slush fund".  :)

 

Agreed.

Also consider the extended/indirect(?) costs.

If you weren't racing, would you need a garage?  What about a trailer?  A truck?  Etc.  Those costs are huge.

When I calculate my racing costs, I include the running cost of the storage/work space(s) that I rent.  That's about $6000/year that gets spent whether I run one or two events per month or one or two per year.  As you point out, I wouldn't have them otherwise.

Clearly it makes the most financial sense to run as many events as possible.

I have done, er, one rallycross this year.  That was a very, very expensive one unless I hit more events.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

When I calculate my racing costs, I include the running cost of the storage/work space(s) that I rent.  That's about $6000/year that gets spent whether I run one or two events per month or one or two per year.  As you point out, I wouldn't have them otherwise.

Clearly it makes the most financial sense to run as many events as possible.

This is some truly excellent rationalization!

I run with a Lemons team and don't own the car so your mileage may vary. 
 

My one time costs are safety gear and camping gear. The camping gear, I already owned so that really doesn't factor into the equation. Helmet, fire suit, shoes, etc... I am on my second set of gear. I would say 10 years or wear and tear are both applicable.  $500-600 over 10 years is only $50-60 per year. 

If you are running a full season of say 5-8 races then the gear is  going wear a lot faster. Then you are talking a tow vehicle, trailer, big shop, spare engine, etc... real money. 

Back to reality, we only race once maybe twice a year. Seat time is usually 2-3 hours for a weekend if things go well.  The cost per weekend runs somewhere between $1000-2000 per driver. That range depends on consumables and track location. A longer tow costs more. Then tires, brakes, gaskets, hoses, fluids, etc are all consumables.  This is assuming the car is already prepared and just needs freshened before the race. Preparing a new race car is a $5-10k endeavor for crap can racing. You could do it for less if you have the time, skill, and parts laying around. That just means you spent $5-10k on parts and tools before you started building the car. 

A track day should be less depending on the organization, but the consumables and car prep could be in the same ballpark.  I am currently working on an NB to do track days and will have $8k in it before it hits a track including purchase price of the car. 
 

If I were on a tight budget this is what I would do:

Concentrate on track days and time trials. I would find a daily driver that was fun on track and specifically prep it for SCCAs Sport Class.

This would allow me to compete as well as have fun.

I could find a car that did this for as low as $7500. I'd likely budget about 20K.

I'd also do what I am doing on the Foxbody Mustang. It has lowering springs that are street friendly, sway bars, camber plates, Koni dampers, better brakes and endurance 200 tread wear tires. 

I would only do events close to the house. As I've already.mentioned in this thread $400 would easily get it done. I would set a budget of $150 a month and do as many events has that allowed. That would probably end up being 4 track days and a couple of autocrosses.

This is what we tell new drivers for our Lemons team.

Cheap Racing Costs

Annual Race License $75.00

Race Entry Fee$400.00 Varies on # of drivers Transponder Rental $10.00

Suit - SFI 3.2A/5 $350.00  Race Image or Lemons

Helmet - Snell 2015 w/ neck restraint clips $200.00

Gloves - SFI Rated$50.00

Shoes - SFI Rated$70.00

Socks - Nomex$20.00

Camping $40.00 Hotel increases costs Weekend Food/ Beer/ Water $60.00

Misc Wear/ Tear/ Maintenance Car Parts$100.00

Open Track$60.00Open track TBD given working out changes or 1st race of season New Tires$125.00

Gas at Race $60.00

Consumables Cost $345.00

Total 1st Race Cost $1,495.00 The 1st One Hurts the Most

Cost per Additional Races$755.00
 

I know this doesn't add up, I adjusted some values due to inflation.  It's an old list but still pretty accurate for us.

I have $12,000 into my HPDE/DD, haven't driven it in two years.  So that's just a cost that gets me nothing currently.

Two races in the Lemons car cost me $600 per race, same tires and brakes.  The next race will cost more as we need new tires.

I'm pretty new to this and as a result don't have much historical data. Having completed 10 events over the last two seasons (9 RallyCross, 1 Autocross), I can tell you what I've spent so far. I already owned the van and trailer that are my tow setup, so I haven't factored any costs for those, other than fuel. 

Car: $1,000

Helmet: $170

Clutch Kit/maintenance/fluids: $260

Flywheel: $77

Tires: $350

Steering Rack: $282

Roof vent: $70

SCCA Annual membership & dues (x2): $200

RallyCross entry fee $67, x9: $603

Autocross entry fee $57, x1: $57

Fuel/snacks $75 per event, x10: $750

Air filters (x7): $91

To date, I’m in for $3,910 - just under $400 per event. As others have pointed out, the "per event" cost will drop with more usage. There was about $1k in "car readiness" costs that I'm not likely to see again in the near future. If I stick to RallyCross, I'm good on tires for the foreseeable future. If I take Autocross more seriously, I will incur tire cost. 

EDIT: I like to separate the cost of the car when I think about the costs per event. The car has resale value that would return the dollars spent on it and readiness.

My daughter co-drives the car, but does not co-drive the funding. The value in that investment is high. 

I raced various forms of motorcycles off and on for 30 years. I have intentionally never done the above exercise... 

It's beginning to look to me like "rent-a-drive" at Lemons is the way to go for bang for the buck.  Although nobody has yet chimed in re: shifter karts...

C'mon people. The first rule about fight club is not to disclose the costs of fight club!

glyn ellis said:

C'mon people. The first rule about fight club is not to disclose the costs of fight club!

I track every penny. At $1400 a weekend and $9000 in a racecar, it's worth it to me. 

At $2500 a weekend and $50,000 in a racecar, there are so many other things that would bring more joy to my life at that price. 

I've seen people get divorced over making their hobby the central focus of their life; especially from a financial standpoint.

My wife as always been super supportive (she encouraged me to buy the Mustang) but even she has limits. "honey you know that trip to Venice and Prague............the motor in the race car through a rod so it will have to be next year".

I have a set budget for car stuff..............I buy what fits that budget. Note, making a living as a purchasing guy influences my attitude.